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Smoking spies set to blitz pubs
and clubs as soon as ban begins ENFORCEMENT officers are to go undercover in pubs and bingo halls to catch people flouting Scotland's smoking ban which starts next Sunday. Edinburgh City Council says its officials will dress in "civvies" to spy on customers to ensure the ban is being enforced. In extreme cases, they will follow smokers home if they refuse to give their names so legal action can be taken. Smokers' rights groups said last night that Scotland was in danger of becoming a "police state". In Edinburgh, four smoking ban officers will join a team of 146 environmental officers implementing the ban as part of their mainstream duties. The ban will see an initial high-density two-and-a-half-week blitz on 3,000 premises in the city using tactics gleaned from officials in Dublin who began implementing their country's ban last year. Officers will look for signs of "smokers' activity" such as ashtrays and the smell of smoke and follow up tip-offs left on a dedicated website. Dublin enforcers have told Edinburgh officials on a two-day factfinding mission that if no smokers are seen on the pavement outside a pub then they are most likely to be hiding within the premises. Under the new legislation enforcers will issue fixed-penalty notices of £50 to smokers while owners and managers face a £200 fine for allowing them to smoke and another £200 fine if they do not conspicuously display no-smoking notices. The Edinburgh team will operate on a 24-hour basis, 365 days a year, with officers who deal with noise complaints which peak late at night being shifted to pubs in the early evening. Gordon Greenhill, head of service for the city's environmental health department, said enforcers were aiming to win "the hearts and minds" of smokers and would not use heavy-handed tactics. "What we want to see is a cultural change policed by the public, the majority of whom are non-smokers. We want to achieve compliance by education and co-operation wherever possible with the aim of protecting customers and staff from passive smoking. "In the first instance we will ask a pub manager if they are aware that smoking is going on in their premises and give them the opportunity to advise us how they will be compliant with the legislation. After that warning if they continue to serve smokers they will be issued with a fixed-penalty notice. "If from the very beginning they are actively colluding with smokers and we see ashtrays and people being allowed to smoke openly, owners may be reported straight to the procurator-fiscal." John Rafferty, 49, a retired police officer about to begin no-smoking enforcer duty, said: "We learned a lot on our visit to Dublin, mainly to engage with the customer and get it across to them that they don't want to end up being barred from their favourite pub." Simon Clark, director of the smokers' rights group Forest, said enforcement officers would be better employed catching "real criminals". "Scotland is in danger of creating a police state which must be very worrying to the majority of sane-minded people. "The whole smoking ban is more about self-promotion for the Scottish Parliament and very little to do with the welfare of people in Scotland." --------------------------------------------------- Please help our fight against the New World Order by giving a donation. As bandwidth costs increase, the only way we can stay online and expand is with your support. Please consider giving a monthly or one-off donation for whatever you can afford. You can pay securely by either credit card or Paypal. Click here to donate. |
